Feature changed by: Michael Schröder Feature #305634, revision 13 Title: Debian-like dist-upgrade live system full version upgrade openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) Interested: Andre Duffeck (aduffeck) Interested: Guy Lunardi (glunardi) Interested: Joe Brockmeier (jbrockmeier) Interested: Klaus Kämpf (kwk) Interested: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Interested: Stephan Binner (beineri) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: With the 11.2 cycle, we want to offer users the ability to perform a live system upgrade in the manner of Debian's dist-upgrade. For the purpose of this cycle, we want to support dist-upgrade from the previous version (11.1) only, as this is a sufficiently complicated problem as is. From the user's view, the difference is between being able to update the system incrementally within the given version or service pack running, to being ble to migrate with a system command ("zypper dup" or similar) to a higher version altogether. In the Debian experience, the set of base distributions is not necessarily limited, but it has been Ubuntu's practice to define what starting points other than "release n-1" are allowed (for instance, all LTS versions are purported to be able to "apt dist-upgrade" to the top of the line, although I have heard of problems trying to jump two years - 6.06->8.10 - in a fell swoop in this manner :-). In the openSUSE scope, we should aim to be able to "dup" between incremental versions, starting from 11.1 to 11.2, and later 11.x to 12.0. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: With the introduction of the Zypper stack to SLE, we finally reached the state of a featureful (which YOU was not) and fast, reliable (which ZLM was not) update stack in the platform. For enterprise use, some tweaks are still desirable (changelogs, rollback, ...) which we are looking at, as well as improvements on the Enterprise management front, which we are working on with our SRM colleagues. The only really significant competitive feature we are missing at this point is the Debian/Ubuntu dist-upgrade functionality, which has a powerful psychological impact at the Enterprise level and a much more tangible impact at the small user / single user level: many with no IT department do use Ubuntu these days on the basis that "chasing" Fedora and openSUSE along the six-month upgrade cycle is too much for them, and feel they can save time on Ubuntu with the combination of dist- upgrade and the longer LTS cycle. The rationale for pursuing this is to revoke the special status of coolness this functionality gives Ubuntu, and to terminate the negative influence that may have on our SLE sales (from the expert's personal opinion, the preference then easily spills into purchasing). Discussion: #1: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2009-01-07 20:42:15) This is the #1 feature in the systems management scope for 11.2 - I have no doubt it will be fun :-) #4: Klaus Kämpf (kwk) (2009-01-09 11:32:53) Passing to mls for technical evaluation (solver + autobuild) #5: Michael Schröder (mlschroe) (2009-01-09 12:48:10) Any hint on what features are currently missing? #6: Klaus Kämpf (kwk) (2009-01-09 13:30:57) (reply to #5) From the top of my head: How to handle * Library ABI changes (e.g. major gcc/g++ upgrades) ? * Core package changes (e.g. devs.rpm to udev) ? * Kernel changes (if application/deamons need a specific kernel abi, dbus comes into mind) ? * Failure handling (network breakdown, package update errors, ...) ? * Booting of the new kernel ? + #7: Michael Schröder (mlschroe) (2009-01-09 14:45:09) (reply to #6) + And debian does this in some way? -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=305634